Marchivum

Description

MARCHIVUM is located in Mannheim and serves as the municipal archive as well as the house of city history and remembrance. Until March 2018 it was called Stadtarchiv Mannheim – Institut für Stadtgeschichte; since then it has operated under the name MARCHIVUM. The building is the converted Ochsenpferchbunker in Neckarstadt-West.

The institution traces its origins to a full-time leadership that, from 1907, established the municipal archive as an independent department and subsequently promoted local-historical research and publications. During the Second World War the archive suffered considerable losses; in particular municipal building files were lost, while council minutes from 1661 onward and registration forms and registration card indexes since 1807 were saved. After 1945 the holdings were systematically rebuilt. In the 1960s an organizational restructuring created the departments Zwischenarchiv and Historisches Archiv; in 2004 the archive received the additional designation “Institut für Stadtgeschichte”.

MARCHIVUM operates on the basis of the municipal archive regulations and the State Archives Act. It brings together extensive holdings and collections, a service centre for research and outreach, and exhibition spaces. Since 2021/2022 two permanent exhibitions have complemented its offerings: the city-history show “Typisch Mannheim!” (opened November 2021) and the Nazi exhibition “Was hat das mit mir zu tun?” (opened December 2022). These are supplemented by temporary exhibitions, an NS documentation centre and, since 2024, the exhibition “MAEMORIES – Amerikanische Geschichte(n) in Mannheim” on the former US site Franklin. Scientifically and organizationally, MARCHIVUM also supervises the KZ-Gedenkstätte Sandhofen.

The archive is publicly accessible: reading rooms enable research into city history, building files and family history. A digitisation centre works on securing and providing access to the written, visual and audio heritage; parts are searchable online. The web portal “MARCHIVUM Druckschriften digital” has offered searchable newspapers, address books and theatre programmes from the 18th to the 20th century since December 2021; newspapers are also accessible via the Deutschen Zeitungsportal. The facilities include an on-site reference library of around 60,000 volumes. Various online databases open up the holdings, including special portals for the Jewish cemetery, the city chronicle, street names and the library catalogue; the transition from Findstar2 to the Virtuellen Lesesaal is planned.

The move into the Ochsenpferchbunker followed a site development that ranged from baroque town-hall rooms through interim storage and an office building to the decision to convert the bunker, which began in 2016 and became operational in 2018. The project received an award in 2020 for the repurposing of the bunker as a public archive and exhibition building. In the stairwell between the ground and second floors are several murals by the artists Sourati (alias Christina Laube) and Mehrdad Zaeri.